Mouse settings - DPI and Windows pointer speed

[Xplaced]

I've been unable to find concrete information regarding mouse DPI.

I understand that mouse DPI is dots per inch, and that if I have a mouse that's 1000 dpi and I move it one inch physically, the pointer on screen should move 1000 dots per inch on the monitor.

What I don't understand is this. I've read conflicting things about high DPI. If it is literally just dots per inch, then I don't see how it helps a lot to go higher than say, at most, 2000 DPI. The reason being I simply can't control the mouse pointer going that fast, if the windows pointer speed is at the default 6th notch.

Now, I can set my mouse to 4000 DPI and put the windows pointer speed at the 3rd notch and it'll feel right. However I don't see what the difference is between that and the 6th notch at say, 1200 DPI. They feel similar.

I know this could start all kinds of arguments. That's really not what I'm looking for here. What I want is some concrete info on a few things that justify high DPI.

I've read that anything but the 6th notch uses software interpolation, which means the mouse DPI is basically being altered via the OS. To me that implies that the mouse DPI isn't such an important thing anymore (high DPI anyway).

I'm know I'm getting really technical about this, but I've been thinking about it a while and I really want to know what's right/wrong if anyone knows.

I contacted Razer about it and they said to ignore the windows point speed settings and that the DPI adjustments override that. To a point I see what they mean, however it doesn't totally override it. I can move the pointer speed with my mouse set at a constant DPI and it will change the mouse speed. So to me, it isn't really overridden. I assume they mean leave the default setting in Windows, 6th notch.
Anyone have some insight on this?

If I missed a thread in search that answers all my questions let me know.

 

[billyb0b]

i have a razer deathadder and i keep it set at 1800 dpi in windows and games. i can go to 3500 dpi but i only notice the difference in response and accuracy when i've been drinking

 

[Xplaced]

I don't drink enough to notice any difference so I can't comment there.

Do you like the 3500 Death Adder mouse? I have the older model that goes to 1800. It's the other mouse I'm interested in. I'm using the Imperator right now. I'm a little put off by its weight. I did not realize it would be heavy. Most of Razer's mice are pretty light. It's a lot heavier in comparison to other Razer mice.

The laser sensor feels slightly "off" to me. I can't figure out exactly what it is. I like their 3G sensor a lot and it's what I've mostly used. So something to me is different between the laser and 3G infrared sensor they use. I can't tell if it's response time or what exactly. I'm getting used to the laser feel, but it's definitely different.

I just can't use the mouse much over 1200 dpi with the windows pointer speed set at 6. The main thing I'm looking for, regardless of the mouse really, is if you are supposed to leave the windows pointer speed at default, what point is a high dpi mouse? It's basically impossible to use unless your screen resolution was just insanely high.

 

[zagood]

These are general rules. Some people strongly disagree with them. I've also been lead to believe that some sensors start acting funny after 3200dpi, that's outside my personal experience.

1. Be sure to turn Mouse Acceleration off in both Windows and in your mouse software.
2. Leave the Windows setting at 6. This will avoid any unnecessary interpolation.
3. Set your DPI to whatever's comfortable on your desktop. If you have a mouse that allows for on-the-fly DPI adjustment, set that as your middle setting.
4. When gaming, set mouse DPI to the highest setting. Reduce the in-game sensitivity to match your playing style, aiming etc.

p.s. some more information/opinions here:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2110680

 

[Xplaced]

1. Be sure to turn Mouse Acceleration off in both Windows and in your mouse software. 2. Leave the Windows setting at 6. This will avoid any unnecessary interpolation. 3. Set your DPI to whatever's comfortable on your desktop. If you have a mouse that allows for on-the-fly DPI adjustment, set that as your middle setting. 4. When gaming, set mouse DPI to the highest setting. Reduce the in-game sensitivity to match your playing style, aiming etc.

Thanks for the info. I have mouse acceleration off and the windows setting at 6. Unfortunately that leads me to think that high DPI is almost pointless if that's the way to use a mouse, because I can't use higher than 1800 without it just being all over the place.

I guess another way to put it would be, what effects negative or positive to lowering the windows pointer speed have? The effects of going over the 6th notch are obvious, because the pointer movement is no longer smooth and starts being very jagged. However, is there a negative effect to lowering Windows mouse pointer speed? If not, then it makes more sense to me to set the mouse to say, 3200 DPI and the pointer speed in Windows to the 3rd notch. That seems to have a smoother feel than the 6th notch and 1200 DPI, which feels around the same speed or close to it. It might be a placebo effect though!

The latter gives me a reason to think high DPI mice have a purpose. Otherwise, I don't see that they do above a certain DPI.

 

[Throckmorton]

Well if you reduce lower than the 6th notch, the OS is doing some resampling of the data it's receiving from the mouse. Any smoothness you feel is artificial. Better to adjust speed using the mouse DPI setting IMO

 

[Xplaced]

I found this post by terentenet: http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=29089122&postcount=16

I tend to agree with this, the problem is I can't "scientifically" back it up. However, according to what I know, what he's saying makes sense at least.

I did some draw tests (very scientific, I used paint and the pencil tool!) and I get smoother lines with OS pointer speed set to 2 and my mouse DPI set to 5500.

This makes sense to me, because this is how I'm thinking about it. If you go over the 6th OS pointer speed notch, then the mouse will start skipping to make it "move faster". So at 400 DPI and the highest notch you get a horrible stair-stepping effect.

It makes sense to me, at least at the moment, that the movement would be smoothest then at the first notch and a super high DPI. In theory....

I think the term DPI here is almost wrong. Because yes, for example, while the mouse hardware is set to 5500 DPI, if you lower the OS pointer speed below 6th notch (which I've read is 1:1 but have yet to see officially, anywhere!) one inch of physical mouse movement no longer equals 5500 dots per inch on screen anymore. It's been... divided, I guess, so that the movement is getting so minute to the point that the mouse moves with as close to zero jitter, or stair-step effect, as possible. Which to me, implies smoothest movement.

So while the mouse hardware is saying "hey I'm outputting 5500 DPI, I'm awesome!" the software is cutting the speed down to something comfortable for the user when you put it on lower notches. The software and hardware are working together to make the smoothest mouse movement possible.

That's how I see it anyway. I can find no information on why lower than 6th notch would be bad for mouse movement. And, in my personal, scientific diagonal line Paint tests (lol!) I do see a jagged edge differences in the line between using different combinations at 6th notch, such as 400 DPI at 6th notch, versus 5500 at 2nd notch. To me, that further leads me to believe that smoothest mouse movement is derived from lowest comfortable OS speed + highest possible hardware DPI setting.

I feel like a real geek now.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

DPI is a misleading term because people associate that with print DPI. They think that the high DPI on a mouse is like a high DPI on a printed page where the higher it is the more accurate it is.

This is false. The reason it is false is how it works. Some companies label their DPI specs as CPI which is more indicative of whats going on. CPI = counts per inch. The mouse sensor will track movement over a surface as coordinate counts that then gets translated into cursor movement on screen.

With an 800dpi mouse if you move your mouse an inch to the right it will move 800 pixels to the right on the screen (assuming you have 1:1 settings and acceleration off).

As Throckmorton said it, when you change the software settings either in windows / mouse drivers / game, then you're either dividing or multiplying to the value the mouse directly measures. This can lead to problems in interpolation and pixel skipping.

Reducing the software setting is generally ok relative to increasing, however if you're always reducing the software setting to make a high DPI tolerable you're just giving yourself busy work.


Super high DPI mice are mostly marketing gimmick and won't be any more precise until we start seeing higher DPI screens and resolution independent OS/apps.

 

[Xplaced]

Thanks for all the input so far.

Something else I found for those of you interested in changing the OS pointer speed settings, is that you can use the registry setting to adjust the speed "between" the notches. For example, notch 2 is "2" and notch 3 is "4". 4 felt too fast for me and 2 was too slow, so I manually set it to "3". Now it feels perfect. However I am resampling/oversampling/doing something because as others have stated I'm not running a 1:1 setup that way (assuming 6th notch is in fact 1:1 in Windows 7, the OS I'm running).

Anyway, for those interested and that didn't know this already, the mouse OS registry setting is located here: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse

There's a key in there called MouseSensitivity. I set it to "3" for my 5500 DPI setting on my Imperator. That feels right to me, this is completely personal speed preference. Then I rebooted the PC for it to take effect (affect?).

The point is just to share that you can edit it to get the "in between" values that the slider won't let you use in Windows pointer speed settings.

I do not know if there are any downsides to doing this yet as I've just discovered it. If I find any I'll let ya know. So far it works well for me.

NOTE: You cannot open the OS Pointer Control Panel without it automatically resetting the value. It will immediately reset the speed setting to something on either side of the value you entered if you even open that page/screen anymore. You'll have to do the process over if you open it.

Also my MouseSpeed, Theshhold1 and Threshhold2 are all set to 0.

 

[terentenet]

@Xplaced, even though I have used 5600dpi and the 3rd notch for years, right now I am playing at 2400dpi and 6th notch. It took some time getting used to and I still believe 5600dpi and 3rd notch was smoother; I guess I gave up on that 1:1 thing and wanted to try the non-interpolated mode.
It's rougher at first and it will take some exercise to get used to and the results are similar. I have never had any odd effects from 5600 @ 3rd, feels about the same as 2400 @ 6th.
A good mouse is the RAT7, it uses a twin eye sensor it's a sensor with 2 sensors, one for the X axis and another for the Y axis. It's as customizable as it gets, a really good piece of hardware.
Money better spent on this than on the old Mamba which had bad tracking issues on anything but hard surfaces and the intermediary G700 which felt cheap to the touch.

PS. My heart is still with 5600dpi @ 3rd and I am still waiting for that 10k DPI mouse to keep at 1st or 2nd notch )

 

[bunnyfubbles]

ugh, so frustrating seeing people fall for the snake oil so hard

of course 5600@3 is going to feel smother than 2400@6, 5600@3 is a much slower setting thus giving the illusion of superior smoothness due to increased control at such absurdly high settings.

Also, the 5600dpi Philips twin eye sensor used in the RAT7 is the same exact sensor used in the Mamba, they should perform identically.

 

[Throckmorton]

@Xplaced, even though I have used 5600dpi and the 3rd notch for years, right now I am playing at 2400dpi and 6th notch. It took some time getting used to and I still believe 5600dpi and 3rd notch was smoother; I guess I gave up on that 1:1 thing and wanted to try the non-interpolated mode.
It's rougher at first and it will take some exercise to get used to and the results are similar. I have never had any odd effects from 5600 @ 3rd, feels about the same as 2400 @ 6th.
A good mouse is the RAT7, it uses a twin eye sensor it's a sensor with 2 sensors, one for the X axis and another for the Y axis. It's as customizable as it gets, a really good piece of hardware.
Money better spent on this than on the old Mamba which had bad tracking issues on anything but hard surfaces and the intermediary G700 which felt cheap to the touch.

PS. My heart is still with 5600dpi @ 3rd and I am still waiting for that 10k DPI mouse to keep at 1st or 2nd notch )

It can't be rougher. You can't get smoother than a pixel.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

It can't be rougher. You can't get smoother than a pixel.

Yeah, it seems so simple yet so many people fudge the understanding of how it works basically making things up if they're not sure, I think its buyers trying to justify why they just forked over $80+ for a mouse.

 

[Throckmorton]

Yeah, it seems so simple yet so many people fudge the understanding of how it works basically making things up if they're not sure, I think its buyers trying to justify why they just forked over $80+ for a mouse.

I don't think they're trying to justify buying snake oil. I have a G9 and I use the full 3200 DPI in Windows. In games I either use 3200 or bump it down to 2400. Either one is way higher than the DPI of a non-gaming mouse.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

I don't think they're trying to justify buying snake oil. I have a G9 and I use the full 3200 DPI in Windows. In games I either use 3200 or bump it down to 2400. Either one is way higher than the DPI of a non-gaming mouse.

So then what do you call reducing windows pointer speed to make 5000+ DPI manageable and then proclaiming a desire to have a 10K DPI mouse so they can reduce the pointer speed even more?

That's justification, they're convincing themselves that the higher DPI setting is giving them higher precision when that's not the case.

Whether or not someone uses higher DPI for a legitimate function such as a higher cursor speed (which will likely impair the user's time critical accuracy) without software interpolation is another matter entirely.

 

[Throckmorton]

So then what do you call reducing windows pointer speed to make 5000+ DPI manageable and then proclaiming a desire to have a 10K DPI mouse so they can reduce the pointer speed even more?

That's justification, they're convincing themselves that the higher DPI setting is giving them higher precision when that's not the case.

Whether or not someone uses higher DPI for a legitimate function such as a higher cursor speed (which will likely impair the user's time critical accuracy) without software interpolation is another matter entirely.

Who says they want a 10k dpi mouse so they can reduce pointer speed?

 

[Throckmorton]

This is weird. I just did an experiment with my G9... I drew lines in Paint.net at 4 different DPI settings on the mouse. All with Windows on the 6th notch, enhance precision turned off.

On all except the lowest dpi, there is a stairstep pattern. I don't understand this. If you move the mouse at an angle, the only stairstepping should be the actual pixels.

 

[Throckmorton]

BTW, I can't use the mouse normally with enhance precision turned off. It's too hard to hit buttons accurately. If I just turn down the speed, it's too low.

 

[Ben90]

Your mouse is using drift control. I don't know much about recent logitech mice since their laser sensors aren't that great, but most other high performance mice have an option to turn that off.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Who says they want a 10k dpi mouse so they can reduce pointer speed?

this guy?

PS. My heart is still with 5600dpi @ 3rd and I am still waiting for that 10k DPI mouse to keep at 1st or 2nd notch )

This is weird. I just did an experiment with my G9... I drew lines in Paint.net at 4 different DPI settings on the mouse. All with Windows on the 6th notch, enhance precision turned off.

On all except the lowest dpi, there is a stairstep pattern. I don't understand this. If you move the mouse at an angle, the only stairstepping should be the actual pixels.

how fast are you drawing the lines? if you aren't naturally drawing the lines as fast as you can it could the sensor naturally depicting the vibrations and imperfections of your unsteady human hand.

I notice a similar, although not as severe, effect with my G9x however the faster I draw with a higher dpi (5000+) the smoother the line. When I naturally slow down and try to forcefully control the mouse to match a line I made @ 400 or 800 dpi I'll get a more jittery line.

It could also be a technical limit of the sensor, for instance I know high end mice other than the G9/G9x use a difference sensor, the philips twin eye, which has a separate sensor for x and y axis tracking.

 

[Ben90]

I guess another way to put it would be, what effects negative or positive to lowering the windows pointer speed have? The effects of going over the 6th notch are obvious, because the pointer movement is no longer smooth and starts being very jagged. However, is there a negative effect to lowering Windows mouse pointer speed? If not, then it makes more sense to me to set the mouse to say, 3200 DPI and the pointer speed in Windows to the 3rd notch. That seems to have a smoother feel than the 6th notch and 1200 DPI, which feels around the same speed or close to it. It might be a placebo effect though!

For the most part, you just want to use whatever DPI is comfortable on the desktop and use 1:1 or 6th notch with no accel.

I can think of a couple situations where you would want to break this however. The original Razer Deathadder for example. This is a very rare case where sensor performance actually goes down when lowering DPI. We want to keep this mouse at 1800DPI or else we start losing performance. If you find that 1800DPI is too sensitive for you, the best solution is to start lowering windows sensitivity. There are certain notches which are okay, and certain ones to stay away from. Here is a list of the good and bad.

1st notch 32:1 Okay to use
2nd notch 16:1 Okay to use
3rd notch 4:1 Okay to use
4th notch 2:1 Okay to use
5th notch 4:3 Not okay
6th notch 1:1 Most preferable setting
7th notch 2:3 Not okay
8th notch 1:2 Not okay
9th notch 2:5 Not okay
10th notch 1:3 Not okay
11th notch 2:7 Not okay

For my Deathadder example, if you want to simulate 900DPI over windows, I would use the 4th notch, 450DPI would be the 3rd notch. Please remember that this is only for mice that sustain performance drops when lowering DPI. The Deathadder is the only mouse that I am aware of that does this. Basically every other mouse should use 6th notch 1:1.

Bunny brings a ray of light to these mice threads. DPI is the most abused specification in the mouse world. Very few people need something over 2000DPI and a lot of people using these 5000+ mice are actually using suboptimal settings to allow the mouse to be usable.

 

[Throckmorton]

this guy?




how fast are you drawing the lines? if you aren't naturally drawing the lines as fast as you can it could the sensor naturally depicting the vibrations and imperfections of your unsteady human hand.

I notice a similar, although not as severe, effect with my G9x however the faster I draw with a higher dpi (5000+) the smoother the line. When I naturally slow down and try to forcefully control the mouse to match a line I made @ 400 or 800 dpi I'll get a more jittery line.

It could also be a technical limit of the sensor, for instance I know high end mice other than the G9/G9x use a difference sensor, the philips twin eye, which has a separate sensor for x and y axis tracking.

Going pretty slow. You're right, the faster the speed the smoother the line. I don't think the jaggedness has to do with unsteady hands though. If it were that, I'd expect more squigliness, instead of stairstepping

 

[terentenet]

Even if the RAT7 and Mamba use the same sensor, they are very different beasts. While the RAT7 works fine with soft cloth surfaces, the Mamba is unstable unless a hard pad is used.
Bunny, even if I know you are right and I said I am using the RAT7 at 2400dpi & 6th notch, I still like fast mice and I still feel like 2400dpi @ 6th notch feels rougher than 5600dpi @ 3rd notch. Call it snake oil or just say that I am trying to justify the money spent on a mouse, but that's not the case. I've spent much more on other useless equipment; I feel the mouse is something you don't want to cut corners at. You keep the thing in your hand the whole day, it might as well be good and you better like it.
People fall for all kinds of marketing schemes. Why do we buy +500hp cars? And if there's someone here that sais he doesn't want one, speak up. We still have to apply the same rules and obey the same speed limits as with 100hp cars, yet we like the extra power and we don't complain.
Bunny, if DPI is so insignificant, how come you have forked over $80 yourself for that G9x? How do you justify your purchase? That's a 5k+ dpi mouse as well.

 

[Throckmorton]

terentenet, try the test I did with MS Paint. It would be interesting if there really is stairstepping at 6th notch and 2400dpi making it feel rough.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Even if the RAT7 and Mamba use the same sensor, they are very different beasts. While the RAT7 works fine with soft cloth surfaces, the Mamba is unstable unless a hard pad is used.
Bunny, even if I know you are right and I said I am using the RAT7 at 2400dpi & 6th notch, I still like fast mice and I still feel like 2400dpi @ 6th notch feels rougher than 5600dpi @ 3rd notch. Call it snake oil or just say that I am trying to justify the money spent on a mouse, but that's not the case. I've spent much more on other useless equipment; I feel the mouse is something you don't want to cut corners at. You keep the thing in your hand the whole day, it might as well be good and you better like it.
People fall for all kinds of marketing schemes. Why do we buy +500hp cars? And if there's someone here that sais he doesn't want one, speak up. We still have to apply the same rules and obey the same speed limits as with 100hp cars, yet we like the extra power and we don't complain.
Bunny, if DPI is so insignificant, how come you have forked over $80 yourself for that G9x? How do you justify your purchase? That's a 5k+ dpi mouse as well.

There's no getting around the fact that the RAT7 and Mamba use the same sensor. If someone was having problems with one and not the other I'd wager it was a rare situation and not the norm. From what I've seen of the twineye sensor, its either love it or hate it (or are indifferent because you don't even notice anything) and the vast minority is in the "hate it" category, they are just far more vocal about it, and understandably so because I don't know of a 5600dpi Philips twin eye mouse that sells for less than $80, it isn't unreasonable to demand utmost quality from such a relatively expensive purchase.

And just to get this out of the way, the 500HP car is apples to oranges in this instance, so I'm not going to even get into that and how it doesn't apply for the sake of avoiding a derail of this thread.

So now I'll jump back on topic:

I've probably spent more on mice than 99% in this forum, I own or have owned one or more of the following: (side note, I have never paid full MSRP for a mouse, I got my G9x for $42, not $80)

IntelliMouse Optical 1.1
IntelliMouse Explorer 3.0
Habu
Copperhead
DeathAdder (1800DPI)
Diamondback 3G
Lachesis
Salmosa
Abyssus
MX510
MX518
G9x
Kinzu

After all this time and after so many mice I'm pretty confident in my mousing knowledge.

The biggest thing about mice that I have learned is that the most important aspect (assuming the sensor isn't complete garbage for one's play-style, and all the mice that I have owned have been adequate for my needs) of a mouse is how its grip works for the user.

That being said, most of the cost of the G9x is justifiable for me right there as it is easily the 2nd best mouse I have used for my finger tip grip style, 2nd only to the Abyssus/Salmosa design.

The next most important element of a mouse (again assuming the sensor isn't complete garbage for one's play-style) is the button layout and performance. Many mouse designs have buttons that aren't reliably accessible in the heat of gaming action - the buttons opposite the thumb buttons on an ambidextrous design for instance. The G9x has nearly perfect button layout and button performance, the biggest gripe being the terrible mouse button 3 (the scroll wheel / middle mouse button). The DPI button position is the best and most intuitive I've while the primary and thumb buttons aren't necessarily anything special they no worse than any other buttons I've ever used. But the scroll wheel is garbage. It easily takes an order of magnitude more pressure to press it than any other mouse I have ever owned (I actually have to specifically think about when I have to press the button in order to press it hard enough to register instead being able to press it purely on instint), I suppose that is due to the inclusion of mouse wheel tilt and the optional hyper scrolling feature, features that seem pretty stupid for gaming. The good news is that its super easy to press the wheel left or right so that's two extra buttons which could be programed to whatever I like.

Which brings me to another excellent feature I highly prize in a mouse: fully programmable and memory retention for driver-less operation. I can reprogram the mouse wheel tilt right and left to perform the same function as middle mouse button 3, and then take the mouse and plug it into whatever computer I like and it will perform that way without installing drivers and reprogramming it for every computer, thus remedying an otherwise terrible flaw (considering I use middle mouse button for knifing in BC2 and scoping for sniper rifles in L4D)

Really, the sensor is one of the last things I care about in my G9x, and I prize the fact that it does not have prediction/drift-control/angle-snapping on by default more than I do the fact that it is "5700" DPI. While I usually use anywhere from 400-1800 with 800 being my primary setting, I do have higher dpi states of 3500 and 5200 for the sole purpose of increasing cursor speed for instances such as when playing Bad Company 2 and controlling a machine gun or tank turret that are fatally slow at the 400dpi I use for when running around. But I can't recall ever going up to 5200.

In fact I could get by just fine and might even prefer if it had the 1800dpi sensor of my original DeathAdder, a sensor wildly regarded as the best performing of all time.

So in a nutshell I bought and currently use the G9x as my primary mouse for #1 its grip, #2 its buttons, primarily the DPI buttons, and #3 its ability to retain settings within internal memory. The sensor was essentially a non-factor. My primary mouse prior to the G9x was the Abyssus, a 3 button finger grip mouse that has hardware switches on the bottom for selecting DPI and polling rate.



Maybe there is something to these higher DPI mice not being able to draw smooth lines at their highest settings at 1:1, however turning down windows pointer speed will only divide and essentially round those "errors" out and provide a smoother looking line. IIRC 3rd notch is 4:1 which should mean 5600 DPI is handling like 1400DPI at 6th notch, which should feel smoother than 2400 DPI @ 6th notch. Doing some of my own testing I get the same speed and same-looking drawn lines in MS Paint when I use 2800DPI at 6th notch and 5600 DPI at 4th notch, although both are far smoother than Throckmorton's results at 2400 DPI on his G9 (vs. my G9x)

Regardless, if a 10K DPI sensor @ ~5,000DPI is drawing squiggly lines @ 6th notch, the sensor @ 10,000DPI will be drawing the same squiggly lines @ 4th notch.

I think you're a classic case of someone using higher DPI than they should be because they have a preconceived notion that higher DPI is better or that they're good enough to surgically control the absurdly high DPI settings when they really aren't, otherwise you wouldn't prefer the slower 5600 @ 3 to the faster 2400 @ 6. Heck, I was in that same boat years ago when 1800/2000DPI was all the rage.